Last updated: October 2026
How much oil passes through each of the world's narrow passages — and where the Bureau has published no figure.
A chokepoint is a narrow passage through which a large share of world trade or energy must pass. When one is disrupted, shipping reroutes, freight costs rise, and prices ripple worldwide. This page gathers the transit figures the Bureau has already published on its chokepoint pages — and says plainly where the Bureau has published no figure.
The headline fact is concentration: a handful of straits and canals carry a large share of the oil the world economy runs on. The Strait of Hormuz alone carries roughly a fifth of global petroleum liquids. The Strait of Malacca carries about 23% of global oil transit. The Bab el-Mandeb carries about 7% of global oil and roughly 12% of global trade. Read the table the way the Bureau wrote it: where a cell says “No figure published,” that is a gap in the Bureau’s own pages, not a claim that nothing flows.
| Chokepoint | Published transit figure | Source cited on the Bureau page | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strait of Hormuz | About 21% of global petroleum liquids — about 20.9 million barrels per day; about one-third of seaborne LNG | U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | The world’s most consequential energy chokepoint; the only sea exit from the Persian Gulf. |
| Strait of Malacca | About 23% of global oil transit | EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | Among the world’s busiest shipping lanes; the jugular of East Asian trade. |
| Bab el-Mandeb | About 7% of global oil; about 12% of global trade | Reuters (September 2026, citing Kpler) | Southern gateway to the Suez route; attacks here reroute Asia–Europe trade around the Cape. |
| Suez Canal | About 12% of world trade | UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2024; Suez Canal Authority | No single oil-volume figure published on the Bureau’s Suez page. |
| Panama Canal | Roughly 5–6% of world trade | Panama Canal Authority | Not primarily an oil chokepoint; carries a large share of US container traffic and LNG. Drought rations transits. |
| Taiwan Strait | Not primarily oil: about half of global container traffic | Bloomberg / industry estimates | The semiconductor lifeline: Taiwan accounts for about 90% of global advanced semiconductor production (TrendForce, 2024). |
| Turkish Straits | No single oil-volume figure published | EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | Carry a large share of Russian and Ukrainian grain and energy exports; the Montreux Convention (1936) governs warship passage. |
| Danish Straits | No single oil-volume figure published | EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | The only natural outlet for Baltic shipping; Russian oil exports pass here. |
| Strait of Gibraltar | No single oil-volume figure published | EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | One of the world’s busiest shipping lanes; the Atlantic–Mediterranean gate. |
| Cape of Good Hope | Not an oil chokepoint in itself; the fallback route | Reuters (2024) | Rerouted ships add roughly 10 days and thousands of miles to Asia–Europe voyages. |
| Lombok & Sunda Straits | No single oil-volume figure published | EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (2025) | Deep-water alternatives to Malacca for supertankers too deep for that strait. |
| Mozambique Channel | Not a major oil transit chokepoint | International Energy Agency (IEA), Global LNG Outlook | An LNG corridor off East Africa, with major LNG projects on Mozambique’s coast. |
Every figure in this table is copied from the Bureau’s own chokepoint pages, which cite the source shown. Figures are baseline (normal-times) transit volumes unless the cell says otherwise. Where a Bureau chokepoint page states that it gives no single figure — for example, the Suez, Turkish, Danish, Gibraltar, and Lombok & Sunda pages — this page reproduces that honesty rather than filling the gap with an outside estimate. Figures from different sources (EIA, UNCTAD, Reuters/Kpler) are not directly comparable: they cover different years, definitions, and measurement methods. The Bureau does not average them into a single number.
